JOHANNESBURG - As he gets set to deliver his sixth State of the Nation Address since becoming head of state, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has proven unable to break the ANC leadership pattern of putting the party before the people.

This is creating instability for his presidency and a downward trajectory of growth, employment and investment for his country.  

At five crucial moments, he has made decisions that favour his position in the party over the law and the betterment of South Africa.  

Ramaphosa was elected president of the ANC in December 2017. Winning with a slim 279-vote majority, he said he was establishing a “beachhead”. He has used the politics of accommodation to extend that position to execute his reform mandate.  

This has meant it has become an unworkable structure by accommodating different factional interests in his Cabinet. The expert panel report into the July 2021 violence, chaired by Prof Sandy Africa, says a divided Cabinet catalysed an incoherent response. 

“It is very clear that different government leaders had different interpretations of what was unfolding, and this resulted in a poorly coordinated response. Ministers differed with each other; there were differences between some Ministers and the officials reporting to them.”

A group of elders convened by Africa and her co-panellists, Mojanku Gumbi and Silumko Sokupa, said the July riots had been a “spectacular governance failure”, while other veterans of the security services said the events had presaged the question of state collapse.

The report found that “poorly rolled-out programmes of service delivery and unacceptable living conditions, the state of the economy, and the persistent levels of poverty, served to provide a ripe environment to light the tinder box that was the incarceration of former President Zuma that led to many poor and desperate people joining in the looting, alongside those more calculating in their objectives and motivation”.

July riots, 2021

In the immediate aftermath of July’s “failed insurrection”, Ramaphosa used strong language, saying no stone would be left unturned in finding the masterminds who stoked the violence and looting for which more than 300 people perished and which stripped R50-billion in GDP.  

 The latest figures from the SA Property Association show that 2,362 stores were looted and the economy lost 3,217 jobs. Most retail, banking and construction company results that have come out since have detailed the extent to which the July violence impacted on the economy and forestalled investment. 

To date, not a single mastermind has been netted — a few social media mavens have been arrested and charged, and the investigation appointed by Ramaphosa into the intelligence failures which led to the violence has not been heard about since. 

Hundreds of people were arrested and released on bail, but the National Prosecuting Authority has never provided a detailed briefing on progress or prosecutorial strategy.  

The report on the violence says “the ANC admits that some people inciting violence were their members and called on them to put a stop to the behaviour, but it is unclear whether their disciplinary action was taken against such members”. 

It is common cause that former president Jacob Zuma’s arrest and jailing on contempt of court charges was a political catalyst for the riots and looting, and that branches, members and structures of the ANC were involved.  Once this became clear, Ramaphosa took his foot off the pedal and left all stones unturned. 

The National Security Council was unprepared for the violence. 

“The National Security Council had not been sitting regularly before July 2021 despite warnings from NICOC (National Intelligence Coordinating Committee) that 2021 was going to be a particularly volatile year.  

“This is concerning, given that it was clear that there was heightened mobilisation for protests… As the tug-of-war around the Constitutional Court case of former president Zuma unfolded, tensions kept rising, especially on the political front,” the report found. 

Cabinet must take overall responsibility for the events of July 2021, and the National Security Council must work much more effectively, said the report. 

“The question that remains is whether the National Security Council has, subsequent to the riots, sat down to conduct a deep analysis of what happened, why it happened, who was behind it, what their ultimate goal was, or why the country faces constant instability, and related questions.” 

The panel found there was a “culture of lawlessness” in South Africa and that the authority of the state had been eroded without any visible plan to respond.  

The graphic of the president’s National Security Council shows that crucial positions remain unfilled: The coordinator for intelligence and the head of domestic intelligence positions have been vacant for months. The suspension of Robert McBride, the director of foreign intelligence, is shrouded in silence.  The Secretary of Defence Gladys Sonto Kudjoe was named at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture as having been, in her former position, part of the network that captured the intelligence structures, but she remains in a strategic role.